For many decades small internal combustion engines, such as those used for recreational vehicles and landscaping tools like chain saws, trimmers, tractors, and lawn mowers, have typically used mechanical, manually-operated recoil pull-starters. In a direct recoil pull-starter, an operator of the vehicle or tool pulls a cord that is wound about a recoil pulley to rotate the recoil pulley in a first direction. The rotating recoil pulley rotates an engine crankshaft, via a one-way coupling, to start a combustion engine. When the cord is released by the operator, the recoil pulley automatically reverses rotation, by way of a recoil spring, to retract the cord back around the recoil pulley.
In the past, small engines were designed to start at wide open throttle (WOT), however, current small engines are designed to start at idle. Unfortunately, many end users are accustomed to starting an engine with the throttle valve in the WOT position and they try to do so even with an engine designed to start at idle. Retraining the end user to not open the throttle valve while attempting to start the engine is difficult.